"Lantern Festival Lantern Viewing Picture" Southern Song Dynasty Li Song.
City Dan Infant Drama Picture" Southern Song Dynasty Li Song.
If we celebrate the Lantern Festival in the Song Dynasty, we will see these strange sights: some lanterns are not carried on the hand, but on the head, and even the fireworks are on the head; Nowadays, the very cheap glass lampshade was worth a lot of money in the Song Dynasty; Although the Song Dynasty did not have modern sound and light equipment, it was able to create an animated ...... with naked-eye 3D effects
Why do you wear a lantern on your head? Why are fireworks set off overhead? Why was the glass lampshade regarded as a treasure by the people of the Song Dynasty? How did 3D animation enter the Song Dynasty Lantern Festival? Let's take these questions to experience the wonder and joy of the Lantern Festival in the Song Dynasty.
Fake flowers and fake birds are all over their heads, and they are very scared.
How wonderful will the big Song lantern be? If you look at the heads of the people of the Song Dynasty, you will know: at that time, young men and women went to the streets to shop for lights, and their heads were always full of flowers and birds.
What kind of flower is a flower? Not peach blossoms, apricot blossoms, and lotus flowers, because these flowers have not yet bloomed in the first month, but snow plums and snow willows. Snow plum is a fake plum blossom made of silk, and then a few pieces of fake snowflakes are cut out of white paper for decoration, and the skeleton is made of bamboo strips, iron wire or gold and silver wire. Snow willow is a fake willow branch made of silk, and the shape of a snowflake is also cut out of white paper, and it is staggered and bundled with green "willow leaves". On the night of the Lantern Festival, before going out, the snow plum and snow willow were inserted diagonally on the bun or hat, and the flowers and branches were displayed and swayed.
In her later years, Li Qingzhao created "Eternal Happiness: Lantern Festival", recalling the scene of her girlhood in Kaifeng, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, enjoying the Lantern Festival: "Zhongzhou is prosperous, and the boudoir is more leisurely, and I remember to pay more attention to three or five. Spread the crown cuier, twist the gold and snow willows, and compete for the help of the belt. "A group of girls compete with each other, wearing flower crowns in their buns, decorated with emerald ornaments, and a few snow willows dangling on their heads. Zhang Kan, a poet of the Southern Song Dynasty who was the same time as Xin Qiji, wrote a poem: "This year's lamp market is well arranged, and the snow willow fragrant plum fee is cut." "Xiangmei is Xuemei, these two poems mean that the annual Lantern Festival is here again, this year's lantern festival is easy to decorate, but the snow willow and snow plum on the head have to be cut hard.
As mentioned earlier, the young men and women of the Song Dynasty visited the lamp, and their heads were full of flowers and birds, and the flowers were snow willows and snow plums, so what kind of birds were birds? It's also an artificially made craft, because it's hard to hold a live sparrow on your head, and it will not only fly, but also pull! Therefore, the bird stuck in the head can only be a fake bird, such as a fake sparrow, a fake swallow, a fake magpie, a fake cuckoo, and so on.
In this famous painting depicting the customs of the Lantern Festival in the south of the Yangtze River, a merchant stands on the right side of the painting, carrying a burden on his shoulders, with a scarf wrapped around his head, and two fake flowers are inserted side by side on the top of the scarf, and a swallow is inserted in front of the fake flower. From the shape, it is speculated that the two fake flowers should be Xuemei, and the little swallow that spreads its wings and soars is naturally a fake swallow.
However, if you have the opportunity to enter the painting, ask the merchant himself, "You have a fake swallow on your head, right?" He probably shook his head in denial, because the Song Dynasty people did not bluntly refer to the fake birds on their heads as "fake birds", and they uniformly gave these fake birds a rather strange name: the moth.
Moths, moths, moths. As you can tell from the name, the moth includes not only a variety of fake birds, but also a variety of fake insects, such as fake moths, fake butterflies, fake dragonflies, fake bees, and fake knows. In fact, the moths of the Song Dynasty were mainly fake insects, among which false moths and fake bees were more common. Therefore, the moth was also called "moth bee" in the Song Dynasty.
The eleventh volume of the Song Dynasty custom document "Guangji of the Year" records: "It also sells snow plums, snow willows, Bodhi leaves and moth bees, etc., all of which are used for it." "Snow plums, snow willows, and moths are all made of silk and silk. What is "缯楮" (zēngchǔ)? Silk is silk, and it is white paper produced from the bark of the tree (also known as the tree). It can be seen that the production of moths is the same as the production of snow plums and snow willows, and white paper and silk are used as raw materials.
In the poems of the Song Dynasty describing the Lantern Festival, moths are often dressed up as girls. For example, Zhu Shuzhen, a talented woman in the Southern Song Dynasty, "Remembering Qin'e": "Moths and snow willows add makeup, and candles and dragons and fire trees compete for each other." "Moths and snow willows decorate the girls' faces, and dragon lanterns and fire trees push the lantern festival to a climax. Another example is the Southern Song Dynasty lyricist Hong Ying's "Ruan Langgui": "The flowers are gorgeous, the jade is Yingying, and the clothes are golden." Moths cluster small dragonflies, call each other to see the test lights. "A group of young, beautiful, gorgeously dressed girls, with moths on their heads, called their friends to see the lights.
In the second volume of the Hangzhou customs document "Wulin Old Things" in the Southern Song Dynasty, some boys will also use moths to dress themselves: "Wandering wanderers, or cutting white paper for cicadas, called 'night moths'." In order to attract the girl's attention, the idle lads cut out the cicadas out of white paper, stuck them in their heads, and walked down the street in a flickering manner.
It's not enough to put fireworks on your head, there are also small light bulbs.
Whether it is snow willow or moth, it is only beautiful and not dangerous to put on the head, but some people in the Song Dynasty will put dangerous things on their heads.
The Northern Song Dynasty customs document "Miscellaneous Notes of the Year" cloud: "On the Shangyuan Festival of the Beijing Division, the cooked jujube was pounded with charcoal pills as a bullet, and the iron branch of Fu was lit on fire, which was called 'fire bayberry', and it was also inserted from the head of the pawn. It is also made of lotus peony lamp bowl, from the top of the pawn. "The Lantern Festival in Kaifeng in the Northern Song Dynasty, dignitaries and dignitaries hugged the streets, rubbed into red balls with jujube powder and charcoal powder, strung them on the wire, twisted into branches, and then lit those small balls, inserted them on the heads of the entourage, and the fire was bubbling up, and the beautiful name was "fire bayberry". There are also some dignitaries and dignitaries, who will make a batch of lotus or peony-shaped lamp bowls, pour lamp oil into them, light the wick, and let the entourage go on top.
Imagine that you have to be careful when you walk with a lamp bowl on your head, and you can only move forward in small steps. As for the fiery bayberry, it must be more dangerous than the lamp bowl, because no matter how careful you are, the sparks will fall down continuously. It is common sense to assume that the retinue carrying the lantern bowl at that time should have worn more than two layers of hats, or fastened the iron helmets of the charging to their heads.
Check the Southern Song Dynasty customs document "Wulin Old Things" again, there is also fire bayberry in it, but it is not that the dignitaries force the entourage to wear it on their heads, but some young men take the initiative to wear it, just like they use white paper to cut "moths" and wear them on their heads, all in order to attract the attention of girls and show their wisdom and courage. Courage is there, but wisdom is not necessarily there, unless these lads can come up with a good way to make sure that they don't get burned by the sparks while they are screaming.
Is there a lamp that can be worn on the head without any danger? There really is, the people of the Song Dynasty called this kind of lamp "bubble lamp". The bulb is actually a small bulb made of glass, and the production method is as follows: grind the quartz sand into powder, mix it evenly with alkaline earth, sieve it evenly, put it in the crucible and burn it to six or seven, the quartz sand enters the molten state, take a thin tube and dip it, blow it gently, and you can blow out a small glass bubble. Find some strings, weave small glass bubbles into them, weave them into a small net, and put them on your head.
The bulb does not have a wick, does not need to be filled with oil, and does not emit light itself, but because it is made of glass, it is particularly reflective. Wearing such a pile of glass bubbles to visit the lamps, the light and moonlight reflect off the glass bubbles, as if they themselves are glowing and shining.
Miscellaneous Notes of the Year" cloud: "The ladies of the capital have lanterns with lanterns, which are as big as jujube chestnuts. "When the girls in Kaifeng of the Northern Song Dynasty visited the lanterns, the lanterns they wore on their heads were very small, as small as dates and chestnuts, and they may also be bubbles. "Wulin Old Things" cloud: "The house of good things has more five-color bubble lights, which is more elegant and clean." "Some families in Hangzhou in the Southern Song Dynasty used bulbs to decorate their courtyards during the Lantern Festival, and those bulbs showed different colors. The bulb itself does not emit light, why do they have different colors? Because when craftsmen make glass, they mix various mineral powders into quartz sand, which can be fired into various colors.
Glass lamps, claw lamps, and rolling lamps all have their own merits.
Frankly speaking, compared with the same period in West Asia and Egypt, the ancient Chinese made glass technology is not advanced, especially the glass with high transparency, in ancient China the yield rate is very low, often regarded as more valuable than gold and silver.
In the Tang and Song dynasties, translucent glass was easy to make, and it was called "colored glass"; Highly transparent glass is difficult to make, and it is called "Poli". Li Bai married many wives in his life, one of whom was from Shandong, and gave birth to a son named "Li Poli" for him. Why did Li Bai give his son this strange name? It's because Poli is too rare and too valuable. Su Dongpo wrote a poem to his friend Wang Gong: "It is a kind of family that is rich and elegant, and it is a kind of money." "The grandson of a certain prime minister is rich and luxurious, and he is a particularly loser, so he is willing to throw away the Poli pen. Today, let alone throwing a glass basin, throwing hundreds of them can't talk about losers, let alone luxury.
According to the record of "Tokyo Menghualu", Song Huizong went out of the palace gate at night, and a large number of entourages lit it with lanterns, usually using "two hundred pairs of red gauze and gold candle cages", and only during the Lantern Festival did "add glazed jade pillars to fan the lanterns". The glazed jade pillar palm fan lamp is a very luxurious palace lamp, but it is not all made of glass, but the craftsman burns a glass ring of the right size, and then splices it into the skeleton of the palace lamp, and covers a layer of white paper or silk yarn on the outside of the skeleton.
In the Southern Song Dynasty, the glass lamp process advanced by leaps and bounds. According to the record of "Wulin Old Things", there was a "five-color glass lamp" in the palace, which used three or four feet long five-color glass strips as a skeleton, and then wrapped in fine yarn as a lampshade; Later, there was a kind of "boneless glass lamp", which was all glass from the skeleton to the lampshade. In the opinion of Zhou Mi, the author of "Old Things of Wulin", boneless glass lamps made of pure glass are even more precious than jade lamps made of pure white jade.
There are sheep's horn lamps in Jiafu in "Dream of Red Mansions", in fact, there are also in the court of the Song Dynasty. For the ancients, the technical difficulty of the claw lamp was not as difficult as that of the glass lamp, but it was particularly labor-intensive: the horn was boiled soft, scraped clean, punched into a wooden peg, the horn was propped up, and then the wooden peg was pulled out, the horn was cut around, and the arcs were cut out, and then these arcs were scraped thin, and then stacked layer by layer, and spliced while heating to spell out a translucent lampshade.
Compared with glass lamps and claw lamps, the less technically difficult ones are rolling lights, which are the kind of lanterns that can be rolled over casually without going out. The rolling lamp seems mysterious, and the structure is super simple: use bamboo to tie out the skeleton of the lantern, fix a shaft on the skeleton, tie a thin wire to the shaft, tie the lamp on the line, and cover the skeleton with a layer of yarn. When the rolling lamp rolls, the skeleton is rotating, and the lamp on the line is not affected, and it remains erect under the action of gravity, so the lamp oil will not be spilled and the light will not go out.
"Miscellaneous Notes of the Year" describes the Lantern Festival in Kaifeng in the Northern Song Dynasty: "Shangyuan rolling lanterns, set up a machine about the lantern ball, in order to install the lantern." ......With infinite operation, and the beginning of it has not been moved, its anointing oil is not dripping, and its beacon flame is not broken. Look at "Wulin Old Things" again to describe the Lantern Festival in Hangzhou in the Southern Song Dynasty: "The paper lantern is built-in, put underground, and turned along the street with its feet, which is called 'rolling lantern'." These two documents prove that there were rolling lamps in both the Northern Song Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty. Now some places have declared intangible cultural heritage, tracing the origin of the rolling lamp back to Qi Jiguang's anti-Japanese resistance, or tracing it back to Erlang Shenzhi Water, all of which are apocryphal instead of history, and the source of the rolling lamp has not been found.
The naked-eye 3D animation of the Song Dynasty version is cleverly designed.
The rolling lamp can be rolled in the hand or kicked on the ground, but it will not move on its own without the help of human labor. The Song Dynasty also had some cleverly designed lamps, driven by mechanisms, which made people feel as if they were in **naked-eye 3D animation.
Tokyo Menghualu mentions that during the period of Song Huizong, the Lantern Festival Lantern Mountain was arranged outside the Xuande Gate at the south gate of the Imperial Palace: "There are three gates in a row, each with a big card of color knot gold book, the middle is called the door of the capital, the left and right are said to be the gate of the guards, and there is a big card called Xuanhe and the people to enjoy together." Left and right of the color mountain, with the color knot Manjushri, Fuxian, across the lion, the white elephant, each in the hand to point out the water five ways, its hand shakes. Use a roller to twist the water to light the top of the mountain, store it in a wooden cabinet, and put it down from time to time, like a waterfall. Outside the Xuande Gate is a north-south direction of the Royal Street, the north end of the Royal Street is a large square, people use bamboo, silk and lanterns, in the square to tie out three color doors, the middle color door plaque is "Dumen Road", the left color door plaque is "the door of the left guard", the right color door plaque is "the door of the right guard", the highest plaque in the middle of the color door is "Xuanhe and the people are happy". On the left and right sides of these three colored gates, there is a giant lantern on each side, which is the shape of Manjushri Bodhisattva riding a lion and Puxian Bodhisattva riding a white elephant. These two lanterns are very tall and have mechanisms behind them that lead water to a high place and shoot it out from the bodhisattva's fingers. Driven by the water force, the Bodhisattva's fingers will swing back and forth, as if beckoning to visitors.
"Old Things of Wulin" mentions a glass lamp mountain in the Southern Song Dynasty Imperial Palace: "It is five feet high, and the characters are all active with organs." "This lamp mountain is as high as five zhang (according to the Southern Song Dynasty construction ruler, 1 zhang is about 32 meters, 5 zhang is 16 meters), the figure on the lamp hill is driven by the mechanism, as if alive.
"Wulin Old Things" also said that the emperor of the Southern Song Dynasty let skilled craftsmen use glass, "between the beams and windows of the palace for the wall, make colorful stories, dragons and phoenixes, meandering like life." "Walls are created between the walls, pillars and windows, and all kinds of stories are told, and there are images of dragons and phoenixes spitting water, and those dragons and phoenixes swim as if they were alive.
"Yongbi" is an architectural term in the Song Dynasty, which is actually a relief. Using translucent glass (that is, the glass that the Song Dynasty people said) as raw materials, combined with molds of different shapes, different shapes of reliefs are fired, and they are attached to the walls or windows of the palace. These glass reliefs do not move, but the craftsman can hide the lanterns and mechanisms in the reliefs, and when the mechanism moves, the lights and shadows circulate, which is the Song Dynasty version of 3D animation.
Text and photo courtesy of Li Kaizhou.